Apps, schmapps!

I keep hearing about how the poor Palm WebOS phone doesn't have many apps. People got excited when they hit 1000 apps, and now 5000 apps (which they hit before, but that was including apps not on the official app store, like it matters.. at least you can get apps without having to have them blessed by an egomaniacal parent company).

Then I hear about Windows Phone 7 already reaching 5000 apps in just a few months, as if that somehow really means something about the quality of the phone or apps. And of course, iPhones have like a billion apps now (I know its not really a billion but the way the Apple people sling around the hyperbole you'd think it was).

And as we all know, quantity is directly related to quality...

So, yeah. Look at all those apps. How many fart soundboards do we need? If you actually went through all these apps on all these phones and removed the stupid and pointless ones, and then picked maybe the 1 or 2 best examples of the numerous apps that do the exact same thing, how many actual useful unique apps would you end up with on each platform? Would the ratio remain the same between platforms?

I have an iPod touch and a Palm Pre phone, and I have maybe 10 apps installed on each. You would think with the number of apps available on each that I would have maybe 10 on the Palm and 500 on the iPod. Or 1 on the Palm and 50 on the iPod since everybody knows the Palm has no good apps. And yet, thats not the case.

So I say, Apps, Schmapps! Its not all about apps. Now excuse me while I download the 11th different fart app for my Palm.